• Light in Scots' darkness
• The Commentary
  You never know...
• The 12 myths of Christmas
  Norman Wells guides us through the tinsel to the truth
• The Book that made your world
  How the Bible created the soul of Western civilisation
• Take up your cross and follow me
  Don Carson at Grace Baptist Mission's 150th
• Alcoholism: best left to experts?
  Paul Witter asks if the church can still help drunkards
• Finding a new pastor?
• John Martin - Apocalypse
  An exhibition at Tate Britain
• Crossing the culture
  Relatively easy love?
• The Music Exchange
  Regulative principle
• Unapologetic Christianity
  Soft-edge apologetics
• Monthly youth leaders column
  Do you love th YP?
• Letter from America
  Occupied?
• Notes to growing Christians
  Redeeming Christians

other articles

• The Minister's Wife - An edited extract
• The adventures of Tintin
• Machine Gun Preacher
• The human condition - Secular shelf life
• Word and Spirit
• Did Jesus really die? - Or did someone else die in his place?
• The secret of contentment
• The incredible journey - Christmas from Genesis to Jesus
• Ten myths about Calvinism
• Presence, power and promise - The role of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament
• Faces of Christ
• Hearing the Spirit - Knowing the Father through the Son
• The pastor as scholar and the scholar as pastor
• John MacArthur - Servant of the Word and flock
• God the peacemaker - How atonement brings shalom
• Good news about injustice - A witness of courage in a hurting world

Astonished apprehension

FACES OF CHRIST
By Jane Williams
Lion. 128 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 0 745 955 223

This attractive book features a full-colour reproduction on every spread. Previously the author has used picture books to explore the themes of Angels, Christmas and Easter, believing that ‘Images reach parts of the human mind that words cannot.’

This collection of 63 marvellous images could raise complex issues about Western religious art — but periods, styles or the changing role of the artist in society need not concern us here: just follow the story of Christ as each episode appears, sometimes with different interpretations by two, or even three, artists. The author has selected artworks to illustrate her text, a summary of the life of Jesus as recorded in the Bible. Details from the images are mentioned to support points in the narrative and pictures run parallel to text as a visual commentary. Helpful captions draw attention to particular views or suggest why one artist depicts things that another omits. Less helpfully, these captions are in tiny italics, not effortlessly legible!

Evangelical readers might long to add more about the meaning of gospel events; nevertheless, to follow the words and pictures in this book is to meditate and marvel afresh. Every stage in the narrative is extraordinary. What Jesus said and did often baffled his family, friends and followers and still constantly challenges our preconceptions. ‘It is not’, stresses the author, ‘a story to hear, but a story to live’. Her gift, as teacher and theologian, is to draw the reader into both text and pictures in astonished apprehension of a remarkable, world-changing sequence of events.

Betty Miles,
Northern Irish Presbyterian, then L’Abri (Rookmaaker); now lives in Brighton and attends an evangelical Anglican church